


Heaven's Final Betrayal

by toomuchofabastard



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: ...eventually, Anal Sex, Angst, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Aziraphale Needs a Hug (Good Omens), Aziraphale Whump (Good Omens), Bottom Aziraphale (Good Omens), Comfort, Consensual Anal Sex, Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Crying, Denial, Dissociation, Drinking, Explicit Depictions of Rape, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Like really terrible, M/M, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Self-Blame, Trauma, Whump, all archangels are bastards you heard it here first folks, feat. 100 percent soft Crowley, post-armageddidn't, yeah...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27264046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchofabastard/pseuds/toomuchofabastard
Summary: It was obvious that Heaven wouldn’t exactly be thrilled about Aziraphale’s role in preventing Armageddon. But neither the angel nor Crowley could have predicted how far they were willing to go to get revenge, and now Aziraphale needs him by his side more than ever.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Gabriel (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Sandalphon (Good Omens)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 92
Collections: Hurt Aziraphale





	1. Chapter 1

The archangel Gabriel looked thoroughly pissed off. Crowley had seen him angry before, but this was new. This time there seemed to be an icy hatred lurking behind his usual façade of charm, beneath the insincere smiles and the pretence of piousness. It sent a shiver down Crowley’s spine.

His steely gaze wasn’t directed at Crowley, however. Gabriel was frowning down at Aziraphale, who stood anxiously in front of him. The vast top floor of Heaven was deserted except for the small group of figures: Gabriel towering over Aziraphale, with Sandalphon crowded close next to him, while Uriel and Michael stood some distance away, both gripping Crowley’s arms tight as - forced to his knees - he wrestled in vain against their hold.

“So, Aziraphale,” Gabriel began. “I expect you know why you’re here.”

Aziraphale laughed nervously. “A-Armageddon, presumably,” he said. “I-I-I just thought that, well, in the interest of the greater good…following the Ineffable Plan, not just the, uh, the Great Plan…” He wrung his hands as he spoke, a forced smile fluttering on his face.

“Be that-” Gabriel interrupted, rolling his eyes slightly “-as it may, that’s not the only transgression you’ve committed. A long list, in fact.” He looked knowingly at the other archangels, who each nodded gravely. “All manner of un-angelic behaviour.”

 _Self-righteous pricks_ , thought Crowley. As if they were models of holiness. He knew how terrified Aziraphale was of his superiors, and always hated to guess at what had made him that way. And he remembered there being a certain amount of rejoicing in Heaven when he and the rest had been cast out in the first place. This probably _was_ about averting the Apocalypse, deep down, but Heaven needed its plausible excuse as always.

“Carrying out temptations,” Gabriel continued, “fraternising with the enemy, and _even_ …” He paused, and his face twisted with a mixture of genuine bemusement and disgust. “… _laying_ with a demon.”

Aziraphale’s smile waned. His eyes flitted towards Crowley, guilt laid bare across his face.

“An act which cannot go without punishment,” Gabriel said sternly. He exchanged a conspiratorial glance with Sandalphon. “Perhaps the punishment should fit the crime,” he said. Aziraphale looked confused.

Gabriel’s eyes grew suddenly cold, the irritation in them vanishing. He looked down at Aziraphale.

“Get on your hands and knees.”

Aziraphale’s smile dropped, surprise and fear flashing across his face in its place. He quickly blinked and raised the smile again, and chuckled softly as if it was a joke, though the fear remained. Gabriel’s expression didn’t change.

Aziraphale began to stutter, looking for something to say. Nothing came.

Sandalphon placed a thick hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder and shoved him roughly to his knees. A wince flashed across Aziraphale’s face as his kneecaps collided with the hard, unyielding marble, and his expression of nervous ingratiation vanished, replaced instantly by dread. He gulped and stared up at Gabriel’s impassive face.

“Gabriel,” he said, his voice wavering. “Please.”

There was a moment of stillness as every being in the room watched the archangel for his response. Even Crowley stopped struggling and held his breath. Then Gabriel spoke.

“ _Now_ , Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale paled and swallowed again. Even from a distance, Crowley could see his chest starting to heave from barely-suppressed panic. He looked like he wanted to run. His eyes darted frantically, brow furrowed; Crowley could practically hear his mind racing. He turned and looked desperately at the other angels standing around, clearly searching for any other way out, any appeal he could make. They offered him no help.

Time seemed to stop as Aziraphale’s eyes met Crowley’s. They were full of terror and distress, but as he looked at Crowley, something subtle seemed to shift in the angel’s expression. The awful acceptance that there was no way out, but also, Crowley realised, a glimmer of resolution. Crowley could only shake his head silently at him.

Aziraphale set his jaw and turned away from him. With a shaking breath, and under the cold eyes of Gabriel and the other angels, he slowly leant forward and stretched his arms out, until he was on all fours on the ground facing away from them all.

Crowley tried again to yank his arms free of the archangels’ hold. “Fight back, Aziraphale!” he yelled. “You can take them!” Aziraphale said nothing. His arms were rigid and Crowley could see him trembling even from where he was. _Come on, angel,_ Crowley thought. _You can’t just let them do this._

Gabriel stepped up behind Aziraphale and knelt deliberately down behind him. Then he began to undo his belt.

Crowley surged forward. “Don’t touch him! Don’t you lay a hand on him, you bassstard!” he yelled. “You’re fucking sssick, all of you!” he spat at the surrounding angels, before unleashing a string of curses at them that would offend even the foulest denizen of hell.

 _Snap._ Michael clicked her fingers and instantly Crowley’s mouth was sealed shut behind a strip of white tape. He continued to rage fruitlessly into the gag as Gabriel finished with his belt and unzipped the fly of his trousers. Aziraphale hadn’t moved, head down and staring blankly at the floor, but at the snap of Michael’s fingers, his eyes came back into focus and flickered towards the side where Crowley was kneeling.

“…It’s alright, Crowley,” he stammered unconvincingly.

Crowley just thrashed his head, but he could do nothing as Gabriel lifted Aziraphale’s coat over his hips, then reached for the angel’s waistband and tugged his trousers and underwear down in one swift move. Aziraphale flinched as if he wanted to curl in on himself, but otherwise stayed where he was, still shaking. Gabriel’s face remained emotionless as he proceeded to remove his flaccid member from his pants. Crowley wasn’t surprised to see that he was larger than average, but it still made him feel like throwing up. _Fuck._ This couldn’t be happening.

With a discrete miracle, Gabriel made himself instantly erect and (Crowley noted with the smallest hint of relief) applied a generous coating of lubricant along his length. He still didn’t show any sign of concern as he shuffled closer to Aziraphale’s shivering form, and grasped his erection firmly. Aziraphale was breathing deeply and rapidly, clearly trying to force himself to relax, but he gasped and his fists clenched into balls as Gabriel began to press himself against his entrance. Crowley snarled behind the gag.

Gabriel ignored him and continued to push slowly into Aziraphale, who couldn’t help but let out a strained whine. He panted, head hanging low and knuckles shining white against the cold marble, as Gabriel sunk slowly into him until he was pressed flush against his rear. The archangel paused, rearranging himself. Then he drew back and rocked into Aziraphale’s body again. Then again. Then again. Crowley could only watch helplessly, horror and rage flooding his veins. Again. And again. Gabriel at least didn’t seem to be deliberately trying to hurt Aziraphale; in fact, he seemed to have no instinct for how to move himself at all; he worked in and out of Aziraphale’s body robotically, methodically, with no pleasure apparent on his face. Aziraphale’s eyes remained open, fixed hard on a spot on the floor, swimming with pain and humiliation. His jaw was clenched closed but tiny grunts escaped every time Gabriel sheathed himself fully inside him.

Crowley tore his gaze away and looked around at the other angels. The perverse bastards were just…standing there, watching. Uriel and Michael’s grip on his arms was vice-like; painfully tight, inescapable, but their faces likewise displayed complete indifference to the scene before them. If anything, he thought he could detect a slight, smug upturn at the corners of that git Sandalphon’s mouth. Didn’t they have a conscience about what was happening? They were supposed to be the good guys, for Satan’s sake. He’d expect as much from his own kind, but not from _angels_.

Suddenly, Gabriel groaned softly and buried himself to the hilt inside Aziraphale. Satisfaction flashed briefly across his face as he stilled and came. Aziraphale’s whole body shuddered violently at the sensation, and he buried his face into his arm as if trying to escape, stifling a sob. Crowley was certain he was going to throw up now. He desperately choked the bile back down his throat as Gabriel withdrew his now-softening member from Aziraphale’s behind and pulled back. Aziraphale winced but otherwise seemed frozen in place, staring blankly and open-mouthed at the floor. His face was a mask of disbelief and shame.

Gabriel cleaned the stickiness from his length with a quick miracle, then stood and calmly tucked himself back into his trousers, doing up the zip and stepping back next to Sandalphon, as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t just… Crowley sniffed. Oh _God_ …

Gabriel sighed, and then turned to look at Sandalphon. They exchanged a brief look of self-satisfaction before Sandalphon arched an eyebrow at him. Gabriel nodded curtly in response.

Immediately, Sandalphon left his side and marched over to Aziraphale’s still-prone unmoving form. Then he too knelt behind him and began to undo his trousers. Crowley’s blood turned to ice. _No no no no… Not more of this_ , he thought. _Enough, just leave him_. He tried to bellow through the gag but it just came out as an animalistic growl.

Hearing Crowley and sensing movement behind him, Aziraphale lifted his head and turned slightly to look back. His eyes shone bright with tears. He tensed as he noticed Sandalphon. The tiny tremble of his lip made Crowley feel like his heart was being torn in two. He’d never felt so furious, or so damned _helpless_.

Aziraphale turned away with another choked sob as Sandalphon finished unzipping his fly. Crowley had to suppress another heave of nausea as he noticed that the archangel was already semi-erect. Sick _fucker_. A subtle miracle and he was fully hard.

Not bothering with any additional lubricant, Sandalphon positioned himself between Aziraphale’s legs and thrust into him without hesitation. This time Aziraphale couldn’t help but cry out, his head arching skywards, but he immediately clamped his jaw shut, strangling the cry in his throat, and tucked his chin back down to his chest, eyes screwed tightly shut. Sandalphon grunted and began pushing into him with thrusts that rocked his whole body. Aziraphale’s hands scrabbled in pain at the polished floor, elegant nails fraying as they clawed at the surface. His hunched shoulders shook with tension.

Crowley turned his head away, unable to bear the sight a moment longer. His stomach was still churning with revulsion. The cavernous space was silent around them except for the sound of rhythmic slapping of skin, Aziraphale’s hitched gasps and Sandalphon’s heavy breathing as he moved in and out of the angel’s rear. The other archangels remained silent but for the occasional disdainful sniff. Crowley cursed them all in his mind, just for existing, for being there to deliberately add to Aziraphale’s humiliation by watching, for stealing his dignity from him.

A fractured whimper suddenly drew Crowley’s attention back.

Sandalphon had fisted a hand into the back of Aziraphale’s coat and was using it to pull Aziraphale back into his hips, his face twisted into a grimace with effort. Aziraphale was biting his lip, hard, desperately trying not to make a sound as the assault continued. Tears leaked from the corners of his shut eyes, each glistening bead dripping down to wet the ground between his hands, like delicate raindrops.

Gabriel sighed loudly again, and folded his arms. He looked thoroughly disinterested in what was happening in front of him, eyes wandering absently around the room. His gaze settled briefly on Crowley, who glared at him with as much hatred as he could muster, but the archangel just looked straight through him then turned away, as if his presence wasn’t even worth acknowledging.

Sandalphon’s thrusts were growing more and more erratic. He hunched slightly over Aziraphale’s back and continued to drag him back by his coat to meet each motion. Aziraphale’s control finally broke and he cried out again as Sandalphon made two final, sharp thrusts and came inside him with a low groan. Each pained cry tore a hole in Crowley’s heart.

They stayed still and joined for a few moments, both panting. Sandalphon scowled down at Aziraphale’s limp form beneath him, then he abruptly pulled out and shoved Aziraphale away from him, leaving him sprawled in a dishevelled heap, with one cheek pressed against the cold marble floor. Aziraphale lay motionless as Sandalphon straightened himself up then retreated back to his position at Gabriel’s side. He held his chin high, like he was proud of what he’d done.

 _Please_ , Crowley begged inside his head. _Please, just let this be over._ Aziraphale stared emptily across the room from his position on the ground. His expression was frozen with shock and heartbreak, and his only movements were little blinks that dislodged tears from the corners of his eyes, and his chest rising and falling with each shallow, rattled breath. The circle of archangels looked down from on high around him. He looked so horribly small in the vastness of the room, exposed and alone in the brilliant white light. Crowley longed to run to him, to protect him, to get between him and those stony gazes.

He wrestled again against Uriel and Michael’s grip and tried to call out through the gag. This time, his struggles succeeded in attracting Gabriel’s attention, and the whole host turned to consider him. Gabriel paused, and then gestured with his head. “Let him go.”

Crowley thanked the God he professed not to speak to as Uriel and Michael released their hold and miracled the gag away, and he could at last scramble gracelessly to Aziraphale’s side. The angel barely reacted as Crowley threw himself down next to him. His watery eyes were still glazed over and unfocused.

Uriel scoffed in their direction. “You really are pathetic,” she said, looking past Crowley at Aziraphale. Crowley felt him flinch slightly. He hissed at Uriel, fury burning in his throat, but stayed at Aziraphale’s side. She ignored him.

Gabriel cleared his throat. “We’re done here,” he said simply. “Leave. And don’t come back.” He took a last, long look at Aziraphale’s prone body, face as impassive as ever, then turned and strode off. The other angels followed closely behind, casting contemptuous glances as they passed. Crowley matched them each with a scowl. _Bastards._ Finally, he and Aziraphale were left alone.

As soon as the archangels were out of sight, Crowley released a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding, ignoring the rush of dizziness that followed, and turned his attention back to Aziraphale. His expression softened immediately. “Oh fuck,” he murmured, and quickly shrugged his jacket off and used it to cover Aziraphale’s exposed waist. Aziraphale didn’t move.

“Angel?” Crowley crawled to his head and, with excruciating gentleness, reached out a hand to brush his cheek. Aziraphale gasped softly and his eyes flicked towards Crowley. Crowley watched as they slowly swam back into focus, registered his presence, then rapidly flooded with shame and anguish, and scrunched closed. A quiet whimper escaped the angel’s throat as he rolled his face into the floor.

Crowley’s hands dithered. He wasn’t sure if he should touch him, not after what he’d just been through. Aziraphale’s chest hitched repeatedly with silent sobs. Tentatively, Crowley placed a hand on the nape of his neck and rubbed his fingers in tiny, soothing circles, wishing like hell that he could do more. Aziraphale thankfully didn’t recoil from his touch, so he continued. He looked around the now-empty hall. He was itching to leave. If he never set foot again in that damned place that had taken so much from both of them, it would be too soon.

“C’mon, angel,” Crowley swallowed. “Let’s get out of here.” There was a pause and then Aziraphale drew in a shuddering deep breath and opened his eyes again. His jaw was tight and his bottom lip was still wobbling slightly, but he was quiet. Crowley curled one arm across his shoulders and delicately cupped his elbow with the other, trying ( _and probably failing_ , he thought) for an encouraging expression. Aziraphale looked up at him, and then shakily began to push himself up. Slowly, achingly, Crowley helped him to sit up.

Aziraphale cringed as his weight shifted to his rear, but he managed to get upright. Quickly he reached for his waistband, and averted his gaze from Crowley’s, eyes clouded with humiliation, as he pulled his pants and trousers back up. Crowley turned away, his heart aching for him. He picked his jacket back up and wrapped it around the angel’s shoulders. Aziraphale only sniffed.

Crowley took hold of his elbow again and helped him to stagger weakly to his feet. Aziraphale swayed slightly as he stood. He was hunched over, his head bowed, and his hands were clasped closely against his stomach. Crowley pulled him as close to himself as he dared, though he felt the angel shy away a little despite his carefulness. Finally, he cast one last black look around at the bright room, and then he snapped his fingers and they both vanished.


	2. Chapter 2

They rematerialised in the doorway of Crowley’s flat with a faint _pop_.

It was dark inside the flat compared to the bright glare of Heaven. Golden rays from the setting sun lanced through the window blinds and painted bars of light across the concrete walls. The air was warm and still, giving the place an intimate, secure feeling - a definite improvement on the previous environment, thought Crowley, although not as welcoming as the bookshop would have been. But he didn’t want to risk going back there until he was certain Heaven had truly washed their hands of them. Plus, after having to stand by powerless and watch… _that_ … happen, he badly needed to feel in control right now. For all his apathy, this flat was a sort of home to him. He’d sculpted every inch of it himself, willing it into being just like the constellations and nebulae all those millennia ago. It was _his_ , not just something Hell deigned to allow him. He already felt less impotent just being there. He wished he could put his sunglasses back on, but they were presumably still lying cracked and splintered on the floor of Heaven somewhere. Finding a new pair would have to wait. There were more important things right now.

Aziraphale stirred next to him, glancing up. The angel seemed to take in their new surroundings; his eyes still dull and glassy, but glimmering briefly with recognition. Then they went blank again and he returned to staring mutely into the middle distance. He didn’t seem to really be seeing the scene in front of him. He just looked frozen in place, like all the life had been stolen out of him. It pained Crowley to see how he was shrinking in on himself, making himself as small a figure as possible.

He drew back, both to give Aziraphale space and a cautious look-over. The angel was a mess; bowtie askew and clothes rumpled. His eyes were rimmed with red, still damp, and there were faint ghosts of now-drying tears trailing down his cheeks. His lip was bleeding where he’d bitten it. His brow remained furrowed with sorrow and shock.

Crowley swallowed and licked his lips. “Um. We… we should get you cleaned up, angel,” he said. No response.

He wrapped an arm across Aziraphale’s stooped shoulders and began to gently steer him towards the bathroom at the back of the flat. Aziraphale followed numbly where Crowley led, although his nostrils flared and eyebrows scrunched further with pain as he hobbled along. Crowley’s verdant houseplants seemed almost to bend closer with curiosity as they approached, but Crowley didn’t even need to glare at them for them to shrink back immediately, as if sensing the rage buried underneath his calm exterior. His fully-golden eyes were testament enough to that.

The bathroom gleamed as if brand new. Actually, Crowley couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in there. He didn’t need it; it just sort of came with the territory of pretending to be an affluent, propertied human. He turned to Aziraphale and shrugged his jacket off of the angel’s shoulders. He was intending to miracle away both his and Aziraphale’s clothes (not an action that was new to him), ready to bathe the angel, but then he paused. Was that the right thing to do here? He didn’t give a blessed fuck if his clothes got ruined by the water - he could just miracle up replacements - but he didn’t want to make Aziraphale uncomfortable. Wouldn’t it be weird if he was fully clothed while the angel was naked? But normally both of them getting undressed meant something else, something that might also set off alarm bells given the current situation. He weighed up the two options, and found them both wanting. Maybe he was overthinking this.

He turned back to Aziraphale’s motionless form, hesitated briefly, and then with a snap of his fingers, everything but Aziraphale’s trousers vanished and Crowley was stripped down to his underwear and vest. The clothes reappeared on the other side of the room, folded and draped neatly over the towel rail. Crowley nodded to himself. Hopefully this compromise should prevent him from making things any worse.

Aziraphale flinched a little as his skin was exposed, and drew his arms even closer to his chest, until he was practically hugging himself. Trying to ignore the stab of grief that arose at the sight, Crowley tenderly rested a hand in the small of the angel’s back and guided him into the shower cubicle. Aziraphale stood silently where he placed him, eyes downcast.

 _Now for the hardest part,_ Crowley thought. He swallowed. Then he reached out and laid his hands, as gently as possible, against Aziraphale’s hips, thumbs brushing the top of his waistband.

“Can I?” he murmured.

There was a beat, and then Aziraphale looked up at Crowley like he was noticing him for the first time. He looked wretched. Crowley thought for a moment that he was going to burst into tears. But he just averted his watery gaze again and then nodded ever so slightly.

Crowley exhaled and flashed him a weak smile of reassurance. Aziraphale didn’t respond. Moving gingerly, Crowley hooked his thumbs into the top of Aziraphale’s trousers and began to slide them down. He stayed upright, being sure to stand close, but not _too_ close, and always within Aziraphale’s line of sight. He felt the angel quiver away from his touch, but he stayed still as Crowley carefully lowered his trousers and underwear to the middle of his thighs, and then miracled them away to join the rest of their clothes.

Crowley breathed out shakily. That was over. Next step. Trying to avoid looking directly at Aziraphale’s exposed body, he reached past him for the shower taps. The top-of-the-range waterfall-head shower system had never actually been connected into the plumbing, but that didn’t matter. Crowley yanked on the control lever and sparkling, perfectly-heated water cascaded out as if falling from the streams of Eden itself. It rained down on them, soon soaking Crowley’s remaining clothes and plastering his dark hair flat to his scalp.

He snatched a washcloth from the shelf and wetted it under the torrent. Then he lifted it cautiously to Aziraphale’s face and dabbed as delicately as he could at his bloody lip. The angel’s lip twitched but his expression remained frozen as Crowley swept away the sticky, congealed blood.

Once he was done, Crowley took another deep breath. He desperately wanted to caress Aziraphale’s face and lace his fingers through his hair, to place the softest of kisses on his forehead in the hope that it would bring him any measure of comfort. But he was sure that in his current state, Aziraphale would recoil from his touch, and the thought of that reaction wounded Crowley too much to risk it.

Instead he took the wash cloth and began to run it softly across Aziraphale’s skin under the warm water, starting in the hollow of his shoulder and working gently outwards towards his arm. He noticed Aziraphale’s breath quicken under his touch, but he let Crowley continue without interruption. Next, up and down his arms in long, smooth strokes. It didn’t seem to remove any of the tension in them like Crowley had hoped. He glanced up at Aziraphale’s face. His expression remained pained and vaguely confused, and his unfocused eyes were now shifting around as though he was deep in thought, searching for something. Like he just couldn’t process what had happened. Crowley couldn’t blame him.

Crowley gulped and forced himself to move down Aziraphale’s body to run the cloth over his knees. His skin there was already mottled with deep, ugly bruises like crimson stormclouds. He seemed to be holding most of his weight on one leg too. Marks of violence and hatred, written onto his body. Crowley shuddered and tried very hard not to recall what had caused them, as he mindlessly ran the cloth along the angel’s legs. The hot water sloshing over him almost lulled him into a trance.

He was stalling and he knew it. At some point he was going to have to confront the most obvious evidence of what had happened. Fuck, how had it come to this? This should never have happened. It wasn’t right, wasn’t _fucking_ right. He shouldn’t be crouching here, doing his best to look after a traumatised Aziraphale. His angel. His angel wasn’t _meant_ for pain like this. God, he didn’t deserve this. It wasn’t fucking _fair._

Crowley steeled himself, and then shuffled around until he was positioned behind Aziraphale. For a few moments, he couldn’t bring himself to look. Eventually he lowered his gaze to Aziraphale’s backside. Oh God… there was _blood_ back there. And other - _ngk_ \- …fluids. He suppressed a retch. Those _bastards_.

A spasm of pain shuddered up Aziraphale’s body as Crowley began to wipe him clean. Crowley looked up at him. His eyes were blinking rapidly but stayed fixed doggedly ahead, and his throat seemed to be convulsing like he was suppressing the urge to cry out. His leg jerked away as Crowley continued, and he sniffed sharply.

 _Bastards, bastards, bastards,_ thought Crowley. If he kept repeating it over and over he could drown out any thoughts about what he was actually doing. He _hated_ having to cause Aziraphale further pain.

The blood soon washed away, mingling silently with the pristine water and vanishing down the drain. Fortunately, the bleeding seemed to have stopped some time ago, and there wasn’t as much as Crowley had initially thought. He straightened up and tossed the washcloth aside.

“All done,” he breathed out. Aziraphale seemed to relax a little.

Crowley reached behind him and flicked off the tap. The cascade ceased immediately, leaving the room unsettlingly silent. He could hear Aziraphale’s breathing, now more laboured and fitful than it had been before. Sighing sadly, he helped him to shuffle out of the cubicle.

He made an upwards gesture with his hand and a very large, very fluffy towel appeared. “There we go,” he muttered, as he carefully wrapped it around Aziraphale’s shoulders and pulled it close around him, completely enveloping the angel in its softness. Aziraphale just stared emptily through him. Crowley sighed again. The silence was killing him. He wished Aziraphale would just… do something. Say something. Come back to him.

Now that the towel was wrapped around him, Crowley was able to see every minute movement of Aziraphale’s body more obviously. He was still shaking like a leaf, Crowley realised. The hot shower hadn’t relaxed him at all. He looked up at the angel’s face. A small gasp forced its way out of this throat at what he saw. There were silent tears leaking steadily from the angel’s hollow eyes, and running down his cheeks in tragic imitation of the rivulets from the shower.

Crowley’s heart broke for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

“Oh _angel_.”

Crowley couldn’t stand it anymore. He hastily reached out and, heedless of how Aziraphale might react, coiled his arms around him and drew him close, pressing the angel’s shivering body into a tight hug against him.

At first Aziraphale didn’t appear to react, but then Crowley slowly felt him raise his trembling arms, and return the embrace. Suddenly Aziraphale’s legs seemed to weaken and Crowley found himself tottering as he tried to hold the angel up. They sunk slowly to the floor, where Crowley knelt with Aziraphale limp, as though boneless, in his arms. There was a long, apprehensive pause. Then Crowley heard something like a choking sound in his ear, followed by an abrupt and strangled gasp, and then suddenly Aziraphale was breaking down, tears bursting uncontrollably from him as he collapsed into Crowley’s chest.

Crowley had seen the angel cry before. One too many glasses of wine and he had a tendency to get a bit weepy, and 6000 years watching over humanity hadn’t been all sunshine and roses. But God, he’d never heard him cry like this. Aziraphale’s chest lurched over and over with heaving, retching sobs, each cry sounding like it was being ripped out of him, and punctuated only by massive, raw gasps as his lungs ran out of air. He clutched at Crowley, his face buried deep in the crook of his neck. Crowley could feel every convulsion of the angel’s body shuddering into his. Oh fuck, it hurt. It felt like something was boring a hole through his chest, crushing his heart until he couldn’t breathe. Oh God. Oh angel.

Aziraphale’s ragged fingernails dug painfully into the skin of Crowley’s back as he wept, but Crowley welcomed the sensation. It gave him something to distract him from his own emotions, which were raging and seething like an inferno inside him. He knew there was nothing he could do now but let this run its course, but the longer he listened to the angel crying, the more he felt like he was going to explode with both sorrow and fury. Instead he snuggled closer into Aziraphale, and screwed his eyes shut, trying to bury it all inside. ~~~~

After a while, Aziraphale’s cries seemed to calm somewhat. Maybe he was stopping, Crowley thought. He stayed still, listening to the angel’s hitched breaths at his ear and waiting for him to break the silence.

“You were right,” Aziraphale said suddenly, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Mmn?”

The angel took another shaky breath, paused, and then suddenly words came spilling out of him. “I sh-should have fought back, I shouldn’t have let them-”

“No, no no, angel,” Crowley cut him off quickly as pain and regret stabbed at him. Shit. He hadn’t meant it like that. He pulled back and clasped Aziraphale’s anguished face in his hands, staring fervently into his eyes.

“I was wrong, ok?”

Aziraphale just sniffed and looked away from him.

“Hey.” Crowley softly turned Aziraphale’s face back towards him and met his eyes again.

“We wouldn’t have stood a chance against four archangels,” he said firmly. “You were just trying to protect us.” Protect _me_ , he thought. He’d seen it in the angel’s eyes when they’d met across the room. They’d both known what might have happened if he didn’t comply. He absent-mindedly thumbed away the tears from Aziraphale’s cheeks.

“You didn’t have a choice,” he murmured.

Aziraphale’s face slowly crumpled again and he slumped forward into Crowley’s arms as another fit of sobs erupted out of him. Crowley quietly wrapped his arms back around him and held him close as he continued to weep into his chest, rocking him gently.

Aziraphale choked out words between his gasps. “Why would…” - his voice cracked with misery - “… _how_ could they do this?”

Crowley could only shake his head, blinking away his own tears. Because they’re bastards, he thought. Because they’re just as bad as Hell, even if they pretend they’re not. _Because they never deserved you._ He said nothing, only held Aziraphale tighter. He was pretty sure the question had been rhetorical anyway. Just the final sounds of an angel’s heart breaking.

He remembered when he’d faced that same betrayal; knee-deep in boiling, agonizing sulphur and utterly rent from the comfort of God’s grace, all alone. (Just for asking questions, a little voice in the back of his mind quipped). How much that rejection had hurt, how he’d likewise had nothing he could do to ease the pain, but to claw at the ground and rail against the Heavens for forsaking him. And Aziraphale had always had such _faith_ in Heaven. It must be hurting him even more. Crowley could tell that realising ‘his side’ were in fact capable of something like this was shattering the angel to his core. Even he had believed that there were some lows they would never sink to. How the fuck could they possibly justify that to themselves? Bloody hypocrites, every last one of them. He kept his touch gentle, but his amber eyes were blazing with anger.

Aziraphale trembled in his arms as another bout of broken sobs wracked his body. Crowley cradled him and ran his fingers soothingly through the back of the angel’s damp hair. He wanted to shush him, tell him that it was alright, that it would be ok. A bunch of pointless platitudes. Like fuck was it alright. He’d gladly pay any price to be able to turn back time and stop the events of the day from happening.

But at least Aziraphale didn’t have to face this alone, Crowley thought, unlike he had. He could be there through it all. He might not be able to fix this, but if all he could give the angel was a comforting hand and a point of stability as his world shook apart, then he would. He would not let him suffer alone.

Crowley couldn’t tell how long they stayed entwined on the floor. Could have been hours. Long enough for the last traces of water to evaporate from his clothes, anyway, and for the light at the window to dim and grey until the room was left in gloom. Gradually, the shivering subsided and Aziraphale’s sobs reduced to gulps and wet sniffles, then to shuddering but even breaths, until finally he was spent. He sagged lifelessly against Crowley, silent and unresponsive again as Crowley stroked his back repeatedly.

Eventually Crowley decided he would have to be the one to break the embrace, and reluctantly pulled away from Aziraphale. The angel swayed a little, but was able to sit up on his own. He looked completely devastated. His downcast eyes - though finally dry - were red and puffy, and dull with misery. Crowley could see the thousand-yard stare creeping back into them. He rubbed the angel’s arm.

“Let’s go into the other room, yeah?” Crowley said. “It’ll be more comfortable.” He paused. “D’you want - I dunno - some cocoa, or… something?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I just want to go to sleep,” he said weakly. His voice was hoarse from crying.

“Okay,” Crowley nodded sadly. “That’s okay.”

He snapped his fingers and they were both instantly clad in fresh pyjamas - his black and silky, and downy blue tartan for the angel. A little of the tension seemed to vanish from Aziraphale’s shoulders. He reached unsteadily out for Crowley and Crowley helped him to stagger to his feet. A hushed moan escaped the angel’s parted lips as he stood and he moved a hand to cradle his lower stomach. Crowley winced in sympathy. Aziraphale stood still for a moment, his eyes closed and breathing laboured. His grip on Crowley’s hand was tight. Crowley gave it a gentle squeeze. Aziraphale glanced briefly up at him, and Crowley tried to flash him a smile, but then he turned away.

Crowley led him back through the jungle of the flat to the secluded and dimly-lit bedroom. The bed was unmade, with black bedclothes rumpled and pillows strewn haphazardly about. Memories of the last time they’d been together in this room came sidling back to Crowley; echoes of his name on the angel’s lips, bare skin sliding against bare skin… a soft, sinful moan…

Another sniffle jerked him back to the present. The version of the angel who stood next to him now was a complete contrast to the one in those memories. He still looked as though he wanted to cry, but was clearly just too exhausted, too wrung out, for any more tears. Crowley held his hand and supported him by the hip with his other arm as he lowered him to the bed’s surface, like some cruel facsimile of a waltz. Aziraphale lay awkwardly down and rolled to face away from him as Crowley rearranged the pillows around him.

Crowley stood, feeling suddenly bereft and unsure what to do. Aziraphale was acting like he wasn’t even there again, just lying limply on the bed and staring across at the opposite wall. Crowley sat down on the edge of the bed behind him, and, when that didn’t prompt any reaction, decided it would be ok to lie down at his back and nestle close against him. He pulled the covers over them both, and then - as much for his own comfort as for Aziraphale’s - slid his arms underneath the angel’s and coiled them around his chest. He looked again at Aziraphale’s face. The angel’s eyes were just…dead inside. _Desolate_ , thought Crowley. That was the word that came to mind. _Barren_ , like a parched, arid landscape.

Demons couldn’t sense love the way angels could, of course, but when Aziraphale was near him, the angel always seemed to have a kind of…glow around him. Almost like he was so full of light that it was spilling out around the edges, brilliant and warm where it fell onto Crowley. It felt, to Crowley, like what love ought to feel like.

But now… he couldn’t sense anything from the angel at all. No light, no warmth, save for that intrinsic to his corporation curled up against him. It had been extinguished. He’d never seen him so - he didn’t like to think it, but…broken.

Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably next to him, the only sign of life still in him. Crowley squeezed him tight. “I’m here, angel,” he whispered. He pressed a tender kiss into the angel’s hair. “Go to sleep.”

At first Aziraphale appeared not to hear, but after a moment, his eyes slowly slid shut and he breathed more deeply in Crowley’s arms. Crowley waited, unmoving in the dark room, until the angel’s breaths had taken on the regular, remarkably-human rhythm of sleep, his mouth parted slightly to draw them in and out. He looked comparatively peaceful, though still solemn, like a heavy and pensive winter’s day.

“ ’Ziraphale?” Crowley whispered. No response.

Crowley felt tears begin to sting at his eyes as he watched Aziraphale sleep. The emotions he’d tried to bury were starting to flare up inside him again. Burning anger, bitter helplessness. Aching, rending grief. He flexed his jaw and swallowed hard, determined to keep them down. A single sob managed to claw its way out of his throat anyway, breaking the silence of the room. Crowley froze. Aziraphale didn’t stir.

Crowley took a deep breath, but it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t hold it back anymore.

He buried his face into the back of Aziraphale’s neck, and wept quietly.


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley was stirred from the inky grasp of sleep by the rumble of the mattress and the sensation of shifting weight next to him. Reality slowly seeped its way back into his consciousness. Aziraphale. The angel was awake. His bed, his flat. Morning.

What happened yesterday.

Crowley grimaced as the memories resurfaced. Fuck. Images flickered unbidden in his mind, snippets and sounds of events like a highlights reel designed specifically to torment him. He rubbed his gluey eyes with the heel of his palm, and forced them open. The visions vanished.

Aziraphale was sat on the edge of the bed, still and silent. Crowley couldn’t see his face.

“Mornin’, angel,” he mumbled.

“Good morning,” Aziraphale replied quietly, but still facing away. Crowley cocked his head, trying to guess at what was going through the angel’s mind. After a long pause, Aziraphale turned to him.

“So-,” he began, with what Crowley could tell instantly was painfully-forced cheerfulness. He patted his thighs and gave a half-hearted wiggle.

“Breakfast at the Ritz?”

His voice was thin and brittle-sounding, higher than normal. The smile on his face didn’t reach to his eyes. The sight rekindled the ache deep in Crowley’s chest.

Crowley sighed. “Angel, it’s- …You don’t have to do this.”

“I know,” Aziraphale replied quickly. Then he exhaled shakily and his eyes scrunched closed.

Crowley sat up next to him and encircled his arms gently around the angel’s waist, hugging his belly and resting his cheek against his shoulder. When Aziraphale’s eyes opened again, they were filled with the same despair and devastation from the night before. His chin started to pucker and he blinked rapidly. He wouldn’t look at Crowley as he spoke, instead staring down at his hands rested loosely in his lap. “I… I don’t want to think about it, Crowley. _Please_ , just for today, can we please just pretend…” His voice wobbled and he trailed off with a gulp, turning away.

Crowley sighed unhappily and rubbed his hands over the angel’s stomach. Pretend what? Pretend like it had never happened? Like yesterday afternoon had just been a bad dream. Like they were still happy. Like he hadn’t been _raped._ _Oh God,_ thought Crowley, as the weight of the word hit him fully. _He’d been raped. They’d raped him._

He looked again at Aziraphale’s face. No matter how valiantly the angel was trying to bury it, he couldn’t just suppress all that hurt, all that trauma. He was visibly _this_ close to breaking, barely holding himself together. Crowley was pretty sure one tiny thing would be enough to throw him over the edge. And stoically, stupidly trotting out that stiff upper lip and hiding behind denial would only make things worse, Crowley knew. Why did he do that to himself? He supposed Heaven had taught him to be that way. Some kind of self-defence mechanism against all their cruelty and control.

But he couldn’t ask Crowley to be party to it. Crowley couldn’t do that, it just hurt too much. Even if Aziraphale needed him to… ah, shit. He looked down, and ran his tongue despondently over the back of his teeth. Yeah. Aziraphale needed him. And wasn’t he always there when Aziraphale needed him. He knew this was never going to be sustainable in the long term. But, especially with how fragile Aziraphale seemed right now… maybe just for one day…

“Alright,” Crowley eventually conceded. He nuzzled sadly into the angel’s shoulder.

“Thank you, my dear,” Aziraphale whispered.

“So-,” Aziraphale took a deep breath and tried again, the artificial mask of cheerfulness returning. “The Ritz, for breakfast? We haven’t been there for a while. And their smoked salmon is simply delectable, and they do that fancy juice that you like, or at least you said that you did last time. Or-or we could do the Wolseley, if you prefer?” He was rambling, still smiling too wide and too emptily.

“Whatever you want, angel,” Crowley replied quietly. Just because he’d agreed, didn’t mean he had to encourage him. He was already hating every second of this.

Aziraphale flashed the fake smile again, and swallowed. “The Ritz it is.”

◥|⧗|◤

They took the Bentley. Crowley drove with less reckless abandon than usual, not wanting to rattle his angel in his current state. Aziraphale spent most of the drive looking vacantly out of the window as the busy London streets zipped by. Crowley shot him furtive glances, wanting to keep watch over him but hoping to avoid the usual chiding “eyes on the road, please dear”. Aziraphale either didn’t see or was choosing to ignore him. His hands in his lap were clasped tight, Crowley noticed. The little signs were still there, betraying what the angel must really be feeling inside.

A table for two for the breakfast sitting was miraculously available, and they were seated immediately. Crowley dismissed the waiter with a flick of his hand when he tried to pull out the chair for him, whereas Aziraphale smiled graciously at the man and accepted his help. He couldn’t hide the wince as he sat though, and even as he tried to smother it, Crowley could see the despair flicker again, ever so briefly, behind his eyes. Then it was gone, and the smile was back, though even less convincing than before. Aziraphale sat up ramrod straight and busied himself with his napkin. Crowley smirked vaguely back at him, heart heavy. He’d put on a new pair of sunglasses, and was very thankful for the camouflage they provided. He didn’t want Aziraphale (or any of the humans, for that matter) reading his expression at the moment.

They ordered quickly, and ate quietly. Aziraphale maintained the frozen smile throughout the meal, and tried a number of times to engage Crowley in pleasant small talk, but Crowley didn’t feel any more like talking than he did like eating, and the resulting silence hung dead and flat in the air around them. Aziraphale, likewise, wasn’t eating with his usual relish, instead picking at his food and batting it around the plate with a far-away look in his eyes. Nonetheless, the angel forced down every morsel and afterwards made a great show of wiping his lips with the napkin and complimenting the waitstaff. Crowley watched him carefully all the while, ready for the moment when the mask would finally crack, already preparing himself to pick up shattered pieces of angel in the aftermath.

But it didn’t come, and once they’d paid for the meal★, they headed to St. James’ Park at Aziraphale’s suggestion. The ducks were rowdy as usual, tearing the pieces of bread they threw to shreds, like vultures at a carcass. Crowley begrudgingly left the angel alone at the pond-side while he fetched them ice-creams from the kiosk, as had become their habit. Aziraphale accepted his with another flash of that god-awful broken smile, and linked his soft hand with Crowley’s purposefully. Crowley gave it a squeeze.

[★Crowley, by force of habit, left a handful of pennies on the table for the waiter, but discreetly doubled the service charge on the bill.]

They strolled around the edge of the water as they ate. Occasionally, Crowley felt a subtle tremor run through Aziraphale’s hand in his, but when he turned to check on him, the angel always looked away, suddenly remarking on the activity of the waterfowl or pointing out a worthy target for one of Crowley’s demonic wiles.

The deflection continued as they finished the ice-creams and headed back towards the bookshop, stopping at Piccadilly Market on the way. It was busy with people today, milling around between the red-and-white striped awnings, underneath which proprietors were hawking old books, antiques, and other sorts of tat that the angel loved. Aziraphale dragged Crowley from stall to stall, cheerily inspecting their wares. He seemed unable (or, Crowley guessed, unwilling) to pause for even a moment, presumably lest the façade he’d built up crumble without a constant distraction. But Crowley caught the mask slipping in a few moments when the angel thought his face was hidden. A shimmer of uncertainty in his eyes, a tiredness in the way he held himself. As the afternoon wore on, Crowley could swear Aziraphale began to limp when he walked, just imperceptibly.

Crowley was worried about him. It had been gnawing away at his stomach all day. But he couldn’t help but feel annoyed too. Aziraphale must realise how much it hurt whenever he turned that bloody fake cheerfulness act of his on _him_. Sure, hiding his feelings from Heaven or even from the humans was understandable, but they were supposed to be on the same side now. They were supposed to share these things. Did he think Crowley would judge him? That he wouldn’t see through it in an instant? They’d known each other too long for the latter, and Crowley prayed that Aziraphale didn’t believe the former. It just hurt, the way Aziraphale was shutting him out.

The sky was turning peach-coloured with the first omens of sunset when they eventually got back to the bookshop. Crowley held his breath as he opened the door. Aziraphale hung back behind him. Inside, everything was still, the air heavy with dust, and the books, papers and furniture exactly as where they’d left them the last time they’d been home. Before. Crowley sighed deeply. Nothing had changed. Even though it seemed everything else in their world had. A weight that he hadn’t realised was pressing down on him seemed to lift slightly from his shoulders.

He turned and motioned Aziraphale inside. The angel looked briefly hesitant, but then he swallowed, raised his chin, and entered. Crowley’s hand went automatically to brush his back as he passed. Finally, they were back where they belonged. He shut the door on the world behind them with a sense of conclusiveness. The hum of the streets melted away, and then it was just them, left in silence.

◥|⧗|◤

They were six bottles of wine down, and Aziraphale was clumsily opening a seventh, when the elephant in the room finally trumpeted its unwelcome presence. Crowley had only drunk one, maybe one-and-a-half, of the bottles. The edges of the room were just beginning to spin a little at the corner of his vision. Aziraphale, on the other hand, was so far beyond plastered that he was heading towards a decorative stucco with crown moulding.

“An-angel, I think you’vhad enough,” drawled Crowley, and then frowned at himself, surprised at how drunk he already sounded.

Aziraphale made a face like a petulant toddler. “Jus’ one more,” he muttered. He finished wrestling with the cork and tipped the bottle unsteadily, managing to get at least half of the liquid into the glass instead of onto the carpet. “Can’t… can’t do any harm.”

Crowley’s face creased in disagreement, but he said nothing.

Aziraphale grasped the glass and then necked the contents back in one gulp like a parched man in the desert. Crowley watched, slightly dumbfounded. Under the veil of inebriation, the worry bit again at his stomach.

“Hey, you r’member that thing at that wedding in Cana?” he asked abruptly. “Wine into water - no, wait-” He made a spinning motion with his hand. “-other way ‘round. You know what I mean.”

Aziraphale looked morosely up at him, cradling the glass close. “Bloody awful evening.”

“You’re just sssaying that ‘cos you weren’t allowed any,” said Crowley. The angel pouted.

“ _Anyway_ …” continued Crowley, feeling increasingly talkative as the alcohol permeated its way into his system. “Point is, you’re not s’pposed to drink it like it’s still water.” He jutted out his chin. “So s-stop drinking like a… a…” What was the phrase? Some kind of animal. Something aquatic?

“…a dolphin,” he finished, with a confidence he didn’t feel.

Aziraphale spluttered with laughter, making Crowley blink in surprise. “ ‘s _fish_ , dear,” the angel slurred, and then collapsed into another giggle. “You and your dolphins!” He suddenly fell about laughing, bending double on the sofa, and inadvertently sloshing wine everywhere.

Crowley smirked uneasily. His unease built as the angel’s laughter grew gradually louder and louder, until it was almost hysterical. _It hadn’t been that funny_ , he thought to himself. The noise sounded wrong to his ears, discordant and unsettling, as though the bottom had fallen out of reality. It actually made him feel a bit sick.

Aziraphale raised his glass-free hand to cover his face. Beneath it, Crowley heard the hysterical laughter slowly transmute into hysterical sobbing.

_Aaand there it is_ , thought Crowley with pained resignation. The angel had finally reached his breaking point. Immediately, he miracled the alcohol out of his body and back into one of the bottles. “Angel?” He stepped closer and knelt down in front of Aziraphale, trying to peer up through the angel’s fingers at his face. Aziraphale’s hunched shoulders jerked fitfully up and down, muffled sobs and hiccups escaping from underneath his hand. Crowley gently removed the wine glass from his other hand, and then took hold of his wrist and rubbed soothingly at his pulse-point.

“Talk to me, angel,” Crowley said softly. “Please.”

He waited while Aziraphale continued to gasp for breath, eventually managed to stop sobbing, and swallowed heavily. Slowly, the angel peeped out at Crowley like a frightened child from underneath the hood of his hand. Half of his face remained hidden, but what Crowley could make out was contorted with anguish.

“How do you make it stop, Crowley?” he asked wretchedly, sniffling. “It just-… I just want it to stop hurting. I don’t know what to do.” He stared into Crowley’s eyes, looking desperately lost.

“Help me,” he pleaded.

And there was that terrible, stabbing ache in Crowley’s chest again. “Oh…c’mere,” Crowley replied with a sympathetic sigh. He clambered onto the sofa beside Aziraphale and drew him close. Aziraphale lent into his touch, burying his face into Crowley’s shoulder as another distressed whine escaped him.

“I can’t help you if you keep shutting me out,” Crowley explained gently, rocking him from side to side. Aziraphale nodded mutely against him. “C’mon,” he rubbed the angel’s back. “Sober up and let’s talk. It’ll help. I promise.”

Aziraphale nodded again and, gradually, he pulled away from Crowley and straightened up. A quick squint of exertion crossed his face, and the empty bottles on the table were suddenly filled again (well, all but one, Crowley noted, but that was forgivable given the circumstances). The angel wiped messily at his eyes with the back of his hand and took a deep, shuddering breath, and then turned to look uncertainly at Crowley.

“Just tell me what you’re feeling,” Crowley whispered. “Don’t keep bottling it all up.”

Resignation settled on Aziraphale’s tear-stained face and he sighed. He looked away at the floor, hugging at his own arms.

“I feel...” he began, his voice strained like it was a struggle to get the words out. “…humiliated.” He rocked back and forth on the sofa, digging his fingernails into the flesh of his upper arms. “…v _iolated_.” He shuddered. “A-And I know I shouldn’t but…” He glanced sideways at Crowley and then back down at the floor, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. “…ashamed,” he finished, voice almost a whisper. He covered his face again as another pained whimper slipped from his throat.

Crowley rubbed at Aziraphale’s knee. “You know it wasn’t your fault, right?” he said. “What they did to you, it was barbaric, a-and senseless, and cruel” - the litany of _bastards bastards bastards_ returned to his head, but he tried not to let the rage carry him away - “and it was _not your fault._ ” He punctuated each word with a gentle pat of the angel’s leg. “Not one bit of it.”

Aziraphale nodded quickly. “I know, I know. It’s not that.” He sniffled again.

Then what? Crowley raised an expectant eyebrow, and waited as Aziraphale gathered himself together again and shuffled on the sofa until he was facing towards him.

“You know, I really thought-” the angel began, and actually chuckled bitterly through the tears. “I really thought that we were the good guys.” He shook his head. “How naïve of me. All those years of loyalty to Heaven, and this is what I get for it. It seems I’ve been well and truly ‘played for a sucker’.”

He looked up at Crowley. “You could always see it, of course.” He sighed ruefully. “I just can’t believe I was ever so foolish as to have-…to have trusted them. I’m just a soft old idiot.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley sighed with a hint of exasperation, squeezing the angel’s hand. “That’s not your fault either. You’re a good person.” He cracked a slight smile. “You _are_ soft, and I love that about you. You see the best in people” - he lifted Aziraphale’s hand to his lips and pressed a kiss into the tops of his knuckles - “like you did in me. Shame on _them_ for taking advantage of your trust.”

Aziraphale looked unconvinced.

“Can you say it with me? ‘None of this was my fault’?” Crowley pressed.

The angel gulped and stared into Crowley’s eyes, a look on his face like he truly wanted to believe him. “…None of this was my fault,” he repeated quietly.

“And you believe that, yeah?”

Aziraphale nodded silently.

“Then…the shame will go away,” Crowley said. “You just gotta give it time.” It would always hurt, of course, but Crowley knew from his own experience that the pain did fade, eventually. He wasn’t about to remind Aziraphale right now that some of this would doubtlessly stay with him forever.

Aziraphale sighed again, deeply and wearily. He glanced over at the once-again-full bottles of wine on the table, but a hint of a frown from Crowley and he stopped reaching for one. “I just want to move on. Forget this ever happened,” he mumbled, waving a hand dismissively.

“…you can’t do that, angel,” Crowley responded, as patiently as he could manage. “It won’t work. We’ll just keep going round the same miserable circle.”

He shuffled closer to the angel again and pulled him into a hug. Aziraphale let him, and curled up close with his head resting heavily against Crowley’s chest. Crowley stroked a hand through his soft curls as he spoke.

“Look, I understand,” said Crowley. “You turn the pain inwards on yourself, because you don’t know how else to survive it. Trust me, I get it.” Aziraphale looked up at him in surprise. “But you have to stop trying to escape all this by suppressing it, angel,” Crowley continued. “If you don’t let yourself feel it, you’ll never be able to move past it.”

The angel looked down and sighed once more. “You’re quite right, of course,” he said quietly. Then his face twisted and another half-sniffle, half-sob left him.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, “for hurting you too. For shutting you out.” He pressed closer into Crowley’s embrace. “I’m a mess.”

“For Satan’s sake, angel, don’t worry about me,” Crowley scoffed softly. A pang of love and fondness joined the ache in his heart as he looked down at the angel. “In fact, don’t you worry about anything right now. I’m here, I’ll look after you.”

He brushed Aziraphale’s hair gently aside, and planted a tender kiss on his temple.

“We’ll get through this. Together.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes, and he smiled - weakly, but, this time, genuinely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter I have pre-written. I don't expect to publish any more for at least a month (normally it takes me 2-3 to write a chapter). But I hope this at least ends on a note of hope! More comfort to follow.
> 
> Also I'd like to shout out to [evilwriter37](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilwriter37/) for his continued support over the year (!) I've been writing this. You're an inspiration <3


	4. Chapter 4

This time, Crowley woke to a face full of angel’s chest, the feeling of the carpet brushing against his knuckles, and irritatingly, in spite of his sobriety, a pounding headache. He cracked an eye open and was greeted with a close-up of Aziraphale’s face, looking pensively down at him.

Crowley smushed his face back into the angel’s waistcoat and mumbled something that might have been ‘good morning’. He felt a plump hand run slowly through the back of his hair. When he craned his head back up, Aziraphale was smiling faintly at him. They were still sprawled on the sofa where they’d lain together, bodies pressed close, long into the night. Crowley must have drifted off at some point. Damn it. He’d meant to stay awake as long as the angel was. He hoped he had been alright on his own.

He sat up, cracked his neck loudly, and yawned a little wider than he should humanly have been able to. Aziraphale also rose unsteadily next to him.

“You sleep at all?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale shook his head. His expression was muted and sombre. He looked tired.

“I was thinking,” the angel replied. “About what you said.” He sighed deeply, a sigh heavy with defeat. “You’re right,” he admitted again. “I can’t keep running away from everything. Burying my head in the sand.”

Crowley rubbed the angel’s thigh fondly.

“It’s going to take some time to come to terms with, that’s all,” said Aziraphale, with fake breeziness. Then he hesitated. “I… I didn’t really believe them capable of such…such…” He didn’t complete the sentence.

“Yeah,” responded Crowley, not really knowing what else to say. That much had been plainly obvious from the way the angel had reacted.

There was an awkward pause. Then Crowley spoke suddenly. “Me neither. For what it’s worth.”

Aziraphale glanced up and laughed lightly, hollowly. “I don’t know whether that makes me feel better or worse,” he said. Then his face settled back into melancholy.

Once again, Crowley didn’t know how to respond. Aziraphale just looked so desperately sad. Over thousands of years, he’d probably seen pretty much every one of the angel’s varied and histrionic repertoire of expressions, but this emptiness and misery broke his demonic heart. Even more so, the thought that there was nothing he could really do to fix it. This wasn’t a situation where he could drop a flippant remark or a line of verse worthy of the bard to light up the angel’s face. He didn’t have the words for this. But he supposed there was one thing he could remind Aziraphale.

“I’m with you,” he said simply.

That brought the angel out of his reverie for a moment. His face softened and he leant into Crowley, the corners of his lips lifting into another genuine smile. Still a shadow of his normal ones, but Crowley felt cheered nonetheless. He hugged him back.

“How ‘bout some breakfast?” he asked after a while.

Aziraphale seemed to contemplate that for a minute, but then he shook his head again. “I’m afraid I’ve… rather lost my appetite.” His face dropped again, his eyebrows pinching with remorse.

Crowley nodded. He supposed that was inevitable, though it still hurt and worried him. It was better than Aziraphale trying to force himself to act like normal, anyway. Fortunately, eating was just a pleasure, rather than a necessity, for them. He was sure they’d get back to it eventually.

He leant closer to Aziraphale again, cupped a hand under his jaw and kissed him softly on his pudgy cheek. “I love you,” he murmured. The angel blinked and smiled up at him again. He laced his hand on top of Crowley’s, eyes closing as he melted into the touch.

“I love you too,” he replied.

◥|⧗|◤

They didn’t do very much for the rest of the day, nor the days following. Aziraphale didn’t express any further interest in leaving the cosy sanctuary of the bookshop, which suited Crowley just fine. The rest of the world could wait. He’d flipped the sign on the door to ‘closed’ the second they’d returned, and as far as he was concerned, it could stay that way indefinitely.

Mostly, Aziraphale pottered about the shop like normal, shuffling books between the shelves in patterns apparently meaningful though inscrutable to Crowley, and sat in his comfy chair and cardigan, thumbing through some old volume, in a blanket of dust. He ignored the phone when it rang. At night, he dimmed the lights so that Crowley could rest, but he stayed awake through until the first beams of sunrise filtered between the window panes and the hubbub on the streets outside started up again.

Crowley watched him closely, and lay around, and dozed, and watched him some more. Occasionally, he tried to kill time by fucking around on his phone (ineffective, it transpired), but he always kept one beady amber eye on the angel.

There was something ghost-like in the way he moved sometimes. Drifting. Untethered. He didn’t hum to himself as he shuffled between the labyrinth of shelves, like he usually did. Crowley missed the humming. His limp seemed to have vanished, at least. Crowley hoped he was healed now. He found himself wondering if Aziraphale would even tell him if he wasn’t.

The angel hadn’t spoken another word about what had happened since that second morning, but Crowley could tell it was still nagging at his mind. He caught him sometimes, staring into the middle distance, deep in thought and with a grave expression on his face. As the days pressed on, blurring into one another, Aziraphale’s mood varied, but didn’t noticeably improve. Sometimes he seemed happy, and Crowley could make him laugh, and it was almost like he had the old Aziraphale back again, like it had never happened. Other times, Aziraphale might have _seemed_ happy to anyone who didn’t know his moods so intimately, but Crowley wasn’t fooled. The fake smiles and cheerfulness returned, despite the angel’s promise.

“Angel, you’re doing it again,” he would say.

“I know, Crowley,” came the tired reply. “Please, just let me have this.”

And sometimes Aziraphale sat and just cried quietly, one hand pressed to his forehead, face marred with grief. Crowley didn’t say anything then, just sat with him in silence and stroked his back until the tears and stifled sniffles stopped. There was nothing left to say, anyway.

It was those times especially when Crowley felt the anger rising within him again. It kept bubbling up at inopportune moments, seemingly unprompted, like molten lava coursing through his arteries, scorching away every other emotion. Damping it back down was a herculean task, and unending, but the last thing he wanted to do was accidentally take it out on Aziraphale. And seeing as the deserving targets of his rage were out of reach - literally - there was nothing to be done with it. He could still feel it though, festering away inside him. Once Aziraphale was better enough that Crowley felt comfortable leaving him alone for a while, he was going to go someplace on his own and scream and howl and claw something - he didn’t know what - to shreds with his bare hands and set whatever was left on fire and watch it burn to ash. It still wouldn’t be enough. But it would help.

Until then, he would be as soft and gentle and patient as he, being a demon, could possibly manage. For his angel. He wouldn’t let him see.

◥|⧗|◤

Hence, he was sprawled out on the sofa one evening, trying not to physically combust, while Aziraphale lingered in the back room, making his first tentative mug of cocoa since it had happened.

It seemed to be taking him longer than Crowley would have thought. When the angel eventually emerged back into the main room and trailed over to where Crowley was sitting, Crowley shifted to face him. The smell of the cocoa wafted into his nostrils and lingered on his tongue, tasting sweet and warm, just like Aziraphale. But as he looked closer, Crowley noticed something.

There were ripples dancing on the surface of the liquid.

“You’re shaking,” Crowley frowned.

“Mm?” responded Aziraphale, blankly. “Oh. Yes.”

He eased himself into the armchair next to Crowley and rested the mug in his lap, glancing vacantly down at it. “Can’t seem to stop,” he muttered. Crowley’s frown deepened.

He leaned forward and tried to catch Aziraphale’s gaze. “Hey.” Aziraphale looked up.

Something was very wrong here. The angel was looking in Crowley’s direction, but as Crowley looked closer, he could see that Aziraphale’s eyes were not actually focusing on his face, but nearer, almost on some invisible plane between them. His gaze was empty. _Just like before_ , Crowley remembered, and dread settled heavy in his stomach.

“Aziraphale? What’s wrong?” he asked, ardently searching those blank eyes for an answer.

The tiniest hint of a crease formed in Aziraphale’s eyebrows. His mouth opened to speak, but for a few seconds no words came out. His eyes drifted away from Crowley’s face and slid aimlessly around the room.

“I… don’t know,” he said eventually, his voice steady but distant. “I feel… strange.” He didn’t say anything further.

Crowley swallowed and tried to stifle the feeling of panic that was starting to rise in his chest. He scanned over Aziraphale’s body, as if searching for a hidden injury, or some clue as to what could have happened, why he was suddenly like this. The wax and wane of the angel’s breast as he breathed seemed a little heavier than normal, but not that significantly. He was still shaking slightly. The cocoa, now rapidly turning tepid, was cradled limply in his lap, like he’d forgotten it was there.

“Angel?” Crowley asked again. Aziraphale turned towards him, and the subtle lines of concern on his face deepened, but his eyes remained blank. His mouth kept moving like he wanted to speak, but couldn’t.

“Angel, please.” Crowley couldn’t keep the falter from his voice.

He clambered out of his seat and closer to Aziraphale. Aziraphale’s hands didn’t resist as Crowley quickly removed the mug to another table, and then grasped them tightly, squeezing in an attempt to get a response from the angel. “I don’t know what to do,” he implored. Still nothing. Shit. Shitshitshit.

In a final desperate attempt to elicit a reaction, Crowley threw himself forward into Aziraphale’s lap, burying his face in his stomach and clinging to him. “Come back,” Crowley whispered. “Come back to me.” He knew he was only talking to himself at this point. The buzzing of panic inside his head made it nearly impossible to think straight. Aziraphale would snap out of this eventually. Right? He had before. He had to. Crowley tried to breathe evenly. He _had_ to.

A few, hideously-long minutes of silence and dread passed, until Crowley suddenly felt Aziraphale’s breathing quicken underneath him. There was a gulp, followed by a quiet, fearful voice. “…Crowley?”

“Oh, thank hell,” Crowley gasped. He looked up at Aziraphale, a dizzying wave of relief washing through him. The angel still looked petrified, but the emptiness in his eyes was gone.

“You scared me, angel,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale said nothing. He was breathing heavily, and his face was now pale and veiled with fear, confusion, and a hint of guilt.

“You were gone. What happened?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale swallowed again and his forehead creased further with distress. “I-it-it was like… nothing felt… real,” he stammered. “Not even y-you. I-I _knew_ you _were,_ ” he added emphatically, “but… it was like I was… disconnected. Everything felt distant. H-hazy. Like I was floating.”

Aziraphale hesitated a moment, and then spoke again. “This, um, this keeps happening.”

“ _What?_ ” Crowley’s eyebrows shot up.

“N-not as bad as that,” Aziraphale continued, licking nervously at his lips, “but since… you know… sometimes I’ve been feeling s-sort of… detached, and, uh, lightheaded. I don’t know why.”

He turned away from Crowley again, and Crowley saw his chin beginning to tremble. “…Am I losing my mind?” the angel whispered.

“Oh, angel. Why didn’t you tell me?” Crowley sighed.

Aziraphale just shook his head, his face crumpling. Crowley took his hand.

“It’s okay,” Crowley said. He thought for a moment. “D’you know why it was worse this time? Like, what set it off?”

The angel nodded, and bit nervously at his lip. “Th-there’s a book, in the back room,” he began to explain. “Um. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management.”

He stopped.

“…yeah?” asked Crowley after a few seconds of silence, dipping his head.

Aziraphale seemed frozen again for a moment. Then he suddenly blinked back to reality and smiled reflexively, fleetingly, in Crowley’s direction. Crowley’s face darkened and he ran his thumb over the back of Aziraphale’s knuckles as the angel continued.

“Before Armageddon, after the birthday party, they - …Gabriel and S-Sandalphon - they, uh, showed up here to- to check up on me. Well…,” - his voice became hushed and he looked down - “…threaten me, really.” He swallowed loudly again, and Crowley felt a tremble run through his hand. His heart clenched in sympathy.

“Gabriel pretended that he wanted to buy it - the, the book -” Aziraphale continued, and he chuckled weakly, “-and declared it to be pornographic.” He rolled his eyes, making Crowley smirk despite himself. “S-So that we could talk in private, you see,” the angel explained. “They cornered me in the back room… They were standing on either side of me, so I-I-I couldn’t see them both at once, and they were asking all these _questions_ , and Sandalphon was blocking the exit and-” His voice got faster and more breathless as he spoke, until he was almost panting through the words.

“Easy. Easy, angel,” Crowley cut in. “Breathe.”

Aziraphale nodded and his eyes closed. Crowley stroked his back as he wheezed and tried to get his breathing under control. Eventually he seemed to calm, and opened his eyes again.

“So when I saw the book in there, it-it reminded me… ” Aziraphale trailed off again.

He didn’t really need to explain any more. Crowley could intuit the cause and effect easily enough.

He pulled him into another fierce hug.

He’d never known. They’d come here, to Aziraphale’s _home,_ just rocked up unannounced to intimidate him. Backed him into a corner and put the screws on him. Crowley could picture exactly how the ‘conversation’ would have gone. _Satan_ _below_. Was there no sanctity they wouldn’t violate? Maybe he should have seen it coming after all. No wonder Aziraphale had reacted so badly to the reminder. The undercurrent of the whole situation was sickeningly similar to what had happened in Heaven.

Crowley held him close until they both calmed down. Aziraphale was the one to break the embrace this time, sighing mournfully as he did so. His eyes, half-lidded, dropped back to the floor. Crowley took hold of his hands again.

“I’ll get rid of the book,” Crowley said. That was the least he could do to help.

Aziraphale’s head jerked up. “Don’t destroy it!” he entreated.

Crowley smiled softly. Oh, how he loved this angel. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied. He cupped Aziraphale’s face in his hands and kissed him gently on the forehead. “I’ll take it to a charity shop or something.”

◥|⧗|◤

For now, Crowley hid the book with the theatre programmes, underneath The Sound of Music. No chance of Aziraphale happening upon it there. He might take the opportunity to get rid of that dratted thing too, while he was at it. It was only another reminder of those _wankers_ in Heaven.

The days continued to slip listlessly by, like water gliding off a duck’s back. Now that he knew what to look for, Crowley began to notice when sometimes Aziraphale slipped into that troubling, vacant state. That’s what the whole drifting-around-like-a-ghost thing had been about. How could he have missed that?

The clue was always in the angel’s eyes. Glazed-over, duller than normal. The confirmation was in his response to questions. If he didn’t look over at Crowley, if there was a delay before his response, if the answers he gave were vague and scripted, emptily cheery. He seemed able to carry out his normal routine on the surface - even hold a simple conversation - but challenging that revealed the lack of consciousness underneath.

What worried Crowley the most was the effect this detachment from reality was having on the angel’s memory. Once he snapped out of it, Aziraphale couldn’t always recall what he’d been doing while he’d been in that state. This lead to painful conversations as Crowley had to remind him:

“You read that one yesterday, angel.”

“…Oh?”

“Yeah. You were sitting there for about two hours, I think.”

“I… I don’t remember.” He always looked so distressed and guilty once Crowley pointed it out. “I must have been… ‘away’… I suppose.”

Crowley thought maybe as time passed that the episodes were getting less frequent, but he soon came to realise that some were just so subtle and their routine so established that he had missed them. He hated himself for it.

Aziraphale’s voice, uncertain and fragile, drifted across the bookshop one late afternoon towards him. “Crowley? What… what have we been doing all afternoon?”

“We’ve just been here, angel,” Crowley replied as his heart sank. “You… you’ve been doing things with your books… you were on the computer for a bit…” Aziraphale just nodded hesitantly. Crowley could tell he didn’t recall doing any of that. Guilt and sorrow spiked through him. He should have noticed. Though even if he had, he realised, he couldn’t normally get Aziraphale to snap out of it. He would just stay with him until it stopped. He wished there was more he could do.

Otherwise though, Aziraphale seemed to be getting slowly better. He returned to regular mugs of tea and cocoa, even nibbled on a few biscuits. Cried less, smiled more. Proper smiles, not the previous pale imitations. Damn, Crowley had missed those smiles.

One night, they made their first foray into the outside world for well over a week - at least, as far as Crowley’s flat. Crowley wanted to check up on his plants, which he was sure were mounting some sort of insurrection by now, and it would do the angel good to get out, rather than languishing around the bookshop all day. They ended up staying, and cracking open a bottle or three of something red and alcoholic, collapsing onto the pristine sofa beside each other. It was good to relax a little. Crowley felt the alcohol slowly unwinding him, his body loosening like a string that had been left taut for too long.

Aziraphale got decidedly tipsy, but fortunately drew the line before booze-induced breakdown this time. He was actually… _giggly_. Crowley could scarcely believe it. He was even further taken aback when the angel suddenly leant close and pressed a quick, sparkling kiss against his unexpectant lips. A bolt of hot lightning seemed to shoot through him. He blinked at Aziraphale in surprise. The angel drew slightly back but kept his face intoxicatingly close to Crowley’s. He gazed up at Crowley, expression hopeful.

Crowley paused, finding himself lost in every detail of the angel’s face. Those blue eyes, locked onto his, so deep sometimes Crowley felt like he was falling into them, drowning in them. The little folds at the corners of the angel’s eyes and every other sketch-like line on his face, from thousands of years of laughter. The way the wine brought a rosy and cherub-like glow to his cheeks, and left a stain, red, on his lips, like rouge. Those lips. Soft, parted, eager. Crowley felt them pulling him inexorably forward, his own mouth parting to match the shape of the angel’s. He held his breath and closed his eyes as they met in the middle, interlocking perfectly together. Fuck, those lips were soft.

Aziraphale returned the kiss, slowly and tenderly, almost reverently. Crowley could taste the Cabernet Sauvignon in his mouth, matching the feeling of it still purring in his own throat. It was like he was drinking him in. The room faded from his awareness as they melted into each other. Crowley raised his hands to caress Aziraphale’s sides, drawing him closer. Aziraphale hummed contentedly and Crowley felt his mouth tighten with a smile as he leaned in and his kisses became firmer. His hand came down to rest on Crowley’s thigh. They felt so consummately fit together, like a set of matching fingerprints, like the quill and paper; made for each other.

As they continued to embrace, Crowley’s hands slowly trailed down Aziraphale’s body to press against his hips. Aziraphale recoiled suddenly and broke the kiss with a small gasp.

“Um, Cr-Crowley,” he stuttered, “I don’t know that I’m ready to-”

Oh, Crowley realised. _He thought I meant-_

“Hey, no, ’s ok. Didn’t mean anything by it,” Crowley slurred quickly. He reached for Aziraphale’s face and stroked the hair away from his temple with a soft smile. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

Aziraphale broke into a matching smile. There were those little creases at the corners of his eyes again. The angel’s gaze floated down to Crowley’s lips, and he leant back in, his mouth seeking Crowley’s once more. Crowley happily met him as Aziraphale reached his arms behind Crowley’s head and crossed his wrists, locking the two of them together. Crowley placed his hands gently back on Aziraphale’s hips and rubbed around them and his lower back in the same rhythm as their mouths moving together. A great feeling of relief and euphoria flooded Crowley’s body as they kissed. This was how things were meant to be. The two of them as one, safe in the home they’d made, finding pleasure and joy in each other. It felt like finally being able to breathe out.

The stereo, neglected in the corner, quietly clicked into life, and began streaming out the mellow strains of whatever soul record Crowley had last left in there. Did he do that? Or were even more sentient machines in his life starting to develop their own opinions about the soundtrack to his and Aziraphale’s love life? Honestly… Crowley was too lost in their own world to give a damn.

They never went further than kisses that night, but around a fortnight later, they were back visiting Crowley’s flat again. Aziraphale had continued to improve in the intervening weeks, and they were back to something close to their normal routine. He’d opened the bookshop to customers again, albeit with much more restricted hours, and Crowley was more content now to leave him to do his own thing. The angel was eating properly again too, though maybe with less delight than normal. The zoning-out was still happening. Crowley hadn’t yet worked out what to do about that.

They found themselves sat on the sofa again, Aziraphale perched in Crowley’s lap, lips on his, and everything was quiet and peaceful. Aziraphale suddenly parted from him and sat back. Crowley raised a quizzical eyebrow at him.

“I think I’m ready to try,” Aziraphale said, fiddling with Crowley’s necktie.

“Try what?”

Aziraphale made a _you-know_ gesture with his eyes and motioned with his head towards the bedroom.

“Oh,” Crowley said. He had wondered when - or indeed _if_ \- Aziraphale was going to want to go to bed with him again, but he’d been waiting for the angel to make the first move. He wasn’t actually expecting it so soon.

“You sure?” he asked. Aziraphale nodded.

Crowley couldn’t help but feel tense as they made their way into the bedroom. He didn’t want this going wrong. The weight of what had happened in Heaven seemed to be sitting on his shoulders like some wicked clawed creature, a constant pressing reminder of everything that had changed. But if Aziraphale said he was ready, well, Crowley could only take his word for it.

Aziraphale settled on the edge of the mattress and reclined back, pulling Crowley down by his scarf to lean over him. Hints of the angel’s cologne flickered in Crowley’s senses as their mouths found each other again. Aziraphale was kissing him more forcefully now. Crowley could feel the angel’s determination as his tongue hungrily searched his mouth. His uneasiness slowly began to fade away as he lost himself in the feeling and the smell of him.

Without breaking the kiss, Aziraphale lifted one arm and clicked his fingers. A thrill raced through Crowley as both of their clothes melted away. Aziraphale shuffled backwards, and then lay back on the bed and spread his legs, gazing up at Crowley through his eyelashes. The sight sent hot blood down to pool in Crowley’s already-aching cock. He slunk forward to join Aziraphale on the bed. The angel hooked his legs around Crowley’s waist and pulled him in. A huff of pleasure escaped from Crowley’s lips as their naked bodies came into contact.

It felt like it had been far too long since he’d seen Aziraphale like this. There was a craving aching through Crowley’s whole body: to touch Aziraphale, to explore his whole body with his hands, to massage and knead all the bare flesh on display to him at last. But having only one hand free, he contented himself with running it slowly up and down the angel’s thigh, loving the feel of the strength of muscle underneath all that ample softness. Aziraphale sighed gently. The angel reached a hand down to where they were pressed together and wrapped his hand around both of their cocks, rubbing slowly up and down. He was just as hard as Crowley. Crowley started to buck his hips into Aziraphale’s touch, relishing the waves of arousal the friction brought and the light moans that soon emanated from the angel with every movement. Clearly, the enjoyment was mutual.

Once he was almost-painfully hard, Crowley sat back up and, with a miracle, applied lube along his erection, shivering slightly at the cold. Aziraphale blinked deliberately as he likewise used a miracle to prepare himself. Grasping his cock, Crowley shuffled until he was in position kneeling between Aziraphale’s raised legs, and then he hesitated. He looked up at Aziraphale. The angel was watching his progress intently, his chest rising and falling heavily and mouth parted. He noticed Crowley pause and lifted his gaze, his eyes meeting Crowley’s. He looked nearly as nervous as Crowley felt, but still just as determined. He nodded earnestly at Crowley. _Ok_ , Crowley thought. _Here goes._

Aziraphale sighed quietly as Crowley entered him. Crowley let out a low groan and bit his tongue, eyes screwing up with pleasure, and pressed further in, until the tightness of the angel’s body completely enveloped his throbbing cock. Oh, how he had missed this. He’d almost forgotten how utterly divine it felt to be inside him like this. Aziraphale’s hands gripped the sheets at his sides and he moaned again, but it was a sound of pure ecstasy, not a cry of pain this time.

Reassured, Crowley began to fuck him, softly and cautiously at first, but with increasing passion as the exhilaration overtook him. Aziraphale lay back and let himself shift with Crowley’s movements, continuing to moan. After a while, Crowley moved to press down close against him, so that his hair kept flopping down into both of their eyes as he thrust, and their laboured breaths were mingling with each other. Aziraphale’s hands came up to dance lightly across Crowley’s back. Sharp, sweet arousal rocketed up and down Crowley’s spine to his shaft, and he buried his face in Aziraphale’s neck with a strangled groan of “angel…” Fuck, it felt so good. He was losing himself in the sensation, feeling the first hints of his orgasm building, when there was a sudden voice in his ear.

“Crowley… w-wait…”

Crowley froze immediately, and whipped his head up. Aziraphale’s face had gone slack and his eyes were blown wide and blank, staring straight past Crowley. His hands were still rested on Crowley’s shoulders, but the rest of his body had gone completely limp.

“Oh _shit_ ,” Crowley gasped. He pulled out as quickly and gently as he could and clambered off of Aziraphale, falling down next to him. “Angel?” he asked, aghast, as he clasped Aziraphale’s face and pulled him to face him. Aziraphale continued to stare, unhearing.

“Bless it,” Crowley hissed under his breath. The angel’s eyes were like two voids of emptiness, completely transparent. This was a bad one. A _bad_ one. The worst he’d seen yet. _Makes sense_ , he thought. But he needed to snap him out of it.

“Hey. Aziraphale,” he urged, massaging the angel’s cheeks. “Look at me. Focus on me.” Nothing. Crowley swore again.

On instinct, he grabbed the angel’s limp hand and pressed it to his chest, holding it there with his own. “Feel that, feel my heartbeat,” he said. Said heartbeat was fluttering and pounding so hard under his ribs that Crowley could practically detect its echoes through Aziraphale’s skin. “Focus on me,” he repeated. “Come back.”

He sat and waited for a response, holding the same position and concentrating intently on Aziraphale’s face, everything else forgotten. He hated being left alone like this, just waiting, with no idea what to do. Minutes trudged slowly by.

Eventually, the angel began to blink and Crowley saw the light return to his eyes, which shifted around as he took in his surroundings again. Crowley watched as he registered where he was and what had happened, and then the angel suddenly let out a little whimpered “ _oh_ ” and collapsed into a mess of tears.

“Hey, hey, it’s ok,” Crowley said, and took him into his arms, holding him close.

“It’s not,” Aziraphale gasped. “This isn’t what I wanted to happen,” he sobbed into Crowley’s bare chest. “Y-You didn’t even get to…” He stopped, and his eyes flickered meaningfully down to Crowley’s groin.

For a second, Crowley didn’t know what he meant. Then it dawned. “Oh, _fuck that_ , angel!” he exclaimed. “It doesn’t matter!” As if getting off was the main thing on his mind right now.

Aziraphale broke down into sobs again.

“Oh, angel, please don’t cry. It doesn’t matter, it’s ok,” Crowley said, and rubbed at Aziraphale’s face, trying vainly to stem the flow of tears down his cheeks.

This had been a mistake. He wasn’t ready after all. And of course, now he was beating himself up about it. Crowley couldn’t stand the idea of Aziraphale thinking he’d somehow let him down.

“They had to ruin _everything_ , didn’t they?” Aziraphale said, his voice more bitter than Crowley had ever heard it. Crowley didn’t want to tell him _that was probably the point, angel_.

“I can’t even make love to you anymore,” Aziraphale continued miserably. “What if I never manage to?”

“Then we won’t anymore. It’s alright.”

Aziraphale sniffed. “That’s not fair to you,” he said.

“Look,” Crowley said. He lifted Aziraphale’s face to his and stared him intensely in the eyes. “I survived six thousand years not having sex with you, angel. I can do another six thousand, and six thousand more, however long. Eternity, _happily_ , if that’s what you need.”

Aziraphale gazed at him, misery and love intermingled on his face, but didn’t reply. Instead he just reached for Crowley and curled up around him, still weeping fitfully into him. Crowley cradled him, heart aching, until Aziraphale eventually finished crying and drifted into a deep, exhausted sleep.

Crowley was still cuddling him when they awoke to the light of the morning. Aziraphale blinked sleepily and shifted closer to Crowley, resting his head on Crowley’s ribs. He looked worn out.

“Are we going to talk about last night?” Crowley asked him.

“Why?” Aziraphale said, and he perked up suddenly. “Do you want to try again?” he asked, face eager.

“No!” Crowley snarled with exasperation. “For Satan’s sake, angel. I want to make sure you’re _ok_.”

Aziraphale’s face fell. “I’m fine, Crowley,” he responded tersely.

“You cried yourself to sleep, angel, you are not _fine_ ,” Crowley snapped back, a note of anger slipping into his tone. Aziraphale just closed his eyes and sighed wearily. ~~~~

Crowley took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. _God, why did getting him to admit his feelings have to be like pulling teeth?_ he thought, though the hypocrisy of the statement wasn’t lost on him.

“Why are you so focused on this as the be-all and end-all of our happiness?” he asked gently.

Aziraphale looked at him and sighed again. “Because… I like having sex with you, my dear. I want to have sex with you. I enjoy this aspect of our relationship,” he said. “And if… if I can’t do that anymore, it’s-it’s like they’ve won. I don’t want this to be another thing they’ve stolen from me. They’ve already taken so much.” His voice wobbled slightly. “I just want to feel whole again,” he finished.

Crowley sighed too. “Ok,” he murmured. “I understand.”

He twisted a finger distractedly through Aziraphale’s shining curls. He could understand that. The struggle to keep something of yourself when everyone around you seemed bent on trying to break you apart. He wanted Aziraphale to be happy again as well.

“Just remember, as far as I’m concerned, you’re already whole,” he reminded the angel. “And… try not to pressure yourself too much, ok?”

Aziraphale smiled weakly and nodded. Crowley hugged him tight.

“You know I’d do anything for you, angel,” he said, trying to make it sound as deeply sincere as he meant it.

“I know,” Aziraphale replied, his voice warm with affection, and squeezed him gently back.

They snuggled together for a few more quiet minutes, and then Aziraphale spoke up, coyly. “Does ‘anything’ include… fresh croissants from the bakery on the corner?”

A smile cracked wide across Crowley’s face. He propped himself up on his elbow and gazed down lovingly at the angel. “Are fresh croissants vital to your continued health and wellbeing, angel?” he asked humorously.

“Well, they _are_ rather,” Aziraphale replied with affected indignation. He blinked up through his eyelashes, pouting slightly.

Crowley smiled again, then bent over and kissed him right on the tip of his upturned nose. He never could resist that face.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised, untangling himself from the sheets. Aziraphale beamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ed. 21/12/2020 - added a few extra lines in the final scene


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something a little bit different for this one.

Madame Tracy contemplated the saucepan full of Brussels sprouts.

Then she rapped her fingers against the side of the pan and glanced at the clock again. 2:46 pm. Mr. Aziraphale would be arriving at around a quarter past three. What to do?

She still made sure to boil up some Brussels before every séance, finding that no potpourri or expensive aromatherapy oils could create an atmosphere of safety and reassurance for the type she entertained _quite_ like the familiar scent of vegetables that had been left on the stove too long.

But that was her regular - well, _human_ \- clients. Would it work on an actual, literal angel? Aziraphale reminded her of some of her (now ex-)clients in ways, although she could think of several key reasons why he would never be interested in the services she’d offered them, beyond the cup of tea. And a cup of tea and a chat was exactly what she’d promised. She wondered again what Aziraphale might be needing to talk to her about. Crowley had made it sound pretty serious when they’d first arranged this afternoon together.

She’d been in the Oxfam shop just off Tottenham Court Road, browsing through some second-hand purses, when the bell over the door had rung and a damp and surly-looking young man had entered. She instantly recognised the copper-red hair, not to mention the serpentine tattoo on the side of his face, the monochromatic clothing, and the curious propensity to wear sunglasses even on a rainy day.

Crowley hadn’t noticed her at first, striding straight up to the till and shoving a hefty tome at the surprised teenager behind it with a brusque “Here.”

“Oh, um, thank you! Is this to donate?” they asked.

“Yeah, yeah, it is,” Crowley had responded distractedly, running a hand through the back of his hair, and eyeing up the door already. Madame Tracy wandered over as the cashier started to input something into their till.

“Do you qualify for Gift Aid?” they asked Crowley.

Crowley turned back and snorted, seeming amused. “ _No_ , I don’t pay taxes,” he explained, as though it should be obvious. That didn’t surprise Madame Tracy one bit. He was a demon, after all. Tax evasion was probably the least sinister activity he got up to.

Crowley made to leave and Madame Tracy rushed to catch his attention before he was gone. “Crowley, love, is that you?” she called out.

He swung round, looking a little startled, but then clearly recognised her after a few seconds. “Oh. Hey,” he said, awkwardly waving a hand. He paused, then asked “You alright?”

“Very well, thank you,” she replied, stepping closer. She noted out of the corner of her eye as the cashier picked up the old book Crowley had donated with a puzzled look and started to type its details into their computer. “Me and Mr. S are still looking for a place in the country. Nothing yet, but with the market being what it is at the moment, we’ll probably have to be patient,” she said.

“…Right,” responded Crowley blankly. His vacant expression made it clear to Madame Tracy that he had no idea who she was talking about. _Come on, demon,_ she thought. You’ve only known him since the _sixties_.

“Of course, he’s retired from the old Witchfinding now,” she led on. “Fancied he might take up firearms restoration, or maybe lock-picking.” She watched Crowley’s face closely. He remained hopelessly blank for another few seconds, and then suddenly she saw a light ping on in his eyes.

“Right, right, yeah,” he said hurriedly. “The sergeant. ‘Cos you’re together now, aren’t you?” he said. She thought she could detect a faint patina of red spreading across his cheeks.

“Exactly,” she said. She smiled widely and kindly at him, and decided to take mercy and change the subject. “And how are you and Mr. Aziraphale doing?” she asked.

Immediately, she saw that it hadn’t been a good avenue of conversation to pursue. Crowley’s face darkened and his eyes became hard and troubled. He ran his tongue across his teeth for a second, appearing to weigh something up in his head.

“Yeah, not so great,” he eventually replied, voice low and jaw tight.

“Oh, dear,” Madame Tracy remarked uncertainly. “What’s wrong?”

“…Something happened,” Crowley sighed, and ruffled the back of his hair again. “He’s not… doing very well with it.”

Suddenly, the spark of an idea seemed to light up the demon’s harried face. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve been thinking; he needs someone to talk to about it - someone who’s not me - and, well, if he’s up for it, could _you_ maybe…?”

Madame Tracy understood what he was getting at, and thought about it. She liked the angel. They saw eye-to-eye on the _important_ things, like the fundamental problem with designating people as wholly Good or wholly Evil, and whether you should put the milk or the tea in first. And he’d been gracious enough to forgive Mr. Shadwell for exploding him and accidentally burning down his bookshop, citing impending Armageddon as a ‘mitigating circumstance’ for all involved.

“I’m sure I’d be very happy to chat to him about whatever’s troubling the both of you,” she smiled.

Crowley smiled too. “Thanks,” he said, casually, but his tone and the relaxing of his shoulders betrayed a deep relief and gratitude.

“I’m free on Thursdays now, if you like?”

“Sounds great- well, I’ll ask him, anyway,” Crowley said.

Madame Tracey nodded. “Just give me a ring, love.” Next to her, the young cashier’s eyes suddenly bulged wide as they stared at whatever result concerning Crowley’s book the computer had just presented them with.

Crowley gave Madame Tracey a sharp nod and then turned to leave. “Um, sir, are you sure you want to-!” the cashier called out, but Crowley had already sauntered back out into the rain.

That had been six days ago, and now the angel himself would be here in less than an hour. Madame Tracey tapped the saucepan again. To boil or not to boil? Probably she should have thought about this sooner. Well… what harm could it do? From the sounds of it, it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation and Aziraphale would need something reassuring. And if it worked on her usual visitors, then why not him? He seemed just as English as she was. Maybe more so.

Madame Tracey nodded to herself, and then set the sprouts to boil.

◥|⧗|◤

About half an hour later, there was a sharp buzz on the intercom. When she opened the front door, the angel and the demon were standing there side by side, one dark and the other fair, almost putting her in mind of a pair of chess pieces. A bishop and a knight, perhaps. Crowley looked uncomfortable, and Aziraphale looked nervous.

They exchanged brief pleasant greetings, and then Madame Tracey beckoned Aziraphale inside. “Do come in, dear.”

“I’ll be back for you around four, alright?” Crowley said to him, as he massaged Aziraphale’s hand.

The angel murmured something in response and kissed Crowley dotingly on the cheek, squeezing him close. Madame Tracy saw a recalcitrant blush blossom underneath the demon’s sunglasses and the corners of his mouth twitch upwards. Aw. They were sweet together.

They parted and Crowley slouched back to his car, which Madame Tracey could swear was a vintage Bentley model older than she was. Aziraphale smiled at her and followed her inside, down the drab hallway and into her less-drab flat.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Madame Tracey said, and then popped quickly into the kitchenette. As well as the Brussels sprouts, now boiling away happily★, she’d been sure to boil the kettle and pre-prepare two cups, saucers, and teabags, which she quickly assembled and brought out to the table in her sitting room. She placed one in front of the angel.

[★Or as happily as any vegetables - had they attained sentience - could be, whilst being boiled to within an inch of their lives.]

“Sugar, dear?” she gestured to the bowl.

“No, thank you,” Aziraphale replied, perfectly sweetly, but his hands were fidgeting underneath the tablecloth.

She sat down next to him and took a sip from her own cup. “Lovely,” she remarked. He likewise sipped his tea quietly, and nodded in agreement, although his face was gloomy.

“So, what exactly was it that you needed to talk to me about?” she asked.

“Um… I-I don’t really know where to start,” he replied with a light chuckle.

“Why don’t you just start at the beginning?” she suggested gently.

Aziraphale took a deep, slightly shaky breath, cradling the tea close to himself, and swallowed. “You, um, you remember the other angel that was at the airbase, in Tadfield?” he began.

Madame Tracy cast her mind back. There had been all manner of bizarre characters and phenomena around that day - an honourable mention to her-with-the-angel-in-her-body - but she did recall a figure who had spoken down to Aziraphale after the two of them had been separated again.

“Tall fellow?” she said. “Sharply dressed? Very easy on the eyes?” A habitual hint of coquettishness crept into her voice with the last question.

Aziraphale nodded. He didn’t look happy at the description.

“Nasty piece of work, I thought,” Madame Tracy added, coldly.

A brief smile flashed across the angel’s face. “Yes,” he said, taking another deep breath. “That’s Gabriel.”

“He’s your boss?”

“Was. I believe I’ve been - uh - ‘let go’.” He laughed humourlessly.

Then he gulped, and looked down. “He- Heaven- well, they… weren’t best pleased with me for helping to prevent Armageddon,” he said. “So they decided I had to be… punished for that, and-and for, um, associating with Crowley.” He raised his eyebrows slightly as he spoke the word _associating_ , and Madame Tracy could tell exactly what sort of ‘association’ he was referring to.

There was a pregnant pause. Aziraphale seemed to be trying to work himself up to saying something, staring down at his clenched hands and breathing heavily.

“They… th-…” he started, but then stopped with a pained frown. He sighed. Then he tried again, but his mouth moved silently, no words coming out.

“Take your time, dear,” Madame Tracy said. She patted him reassuringly on shoulder.

He smiled briefly again, but the anguish was obvious in his eyes. For a few moments, he just sat still and took several deep, forced breaths, while Madame Tracy waited patiently. Eventually, he managed to stutter it out.

“They… r-raped me.”

Then he turned immediately away to look up at the ceiling, and blinked rapidly as tears formed in the bottom of his eyes.

“Oh, _sweetheart_ ,” exclaimed Madame Tracy. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting but it certainly wasn’t that. Instinctively, she reached to brush his hand. Aziraphale glanced at her and then quickly away again, his chest beginning to heave. A few choked gasps escaped the angel and his shoulders jerked silently up and down with sobs. Madame Tracy rushed to grab him a tissue from the box on the sideboard.

He accepted the tissue with another quick polite smile, and dabbed heavily at the watery corners of his eyes. She continued to stroke the back of his hand as he dried his eyes and tried to compose himself a little. The poor dear. It was unthinkable, what had happened to him.

“Apologies,” Aziraphale eventually said. “That’s the first time I’ve actually…s-said it out loud.”

Madame Tracy gave him a sympathetic look and squeezed his shaking hand. “No need to apologise, dear,” she said. “I’m so sorry. That’s dreadful.” She shook her head. “Awful.”

Aziraphale said nothing.

She didn’t feel it was really her place to ask him to clarify, but she felt herself pressed on by an awful morbid curiosity. “You said ‘they’…?” she asked cautiously. ~~~~

Aziraphale swallowed, and managed to somehow look even more miserable. “A-Another angel, you wouldn’t know him,” he explained. His eyes wandered a little and his face darkened. “Even nastier piece of work than Gabriel. Always has been.” A minute shudder ran through his body.

“And they have the cheek to call themselves angels,” Madame Tracy scoffed.

Aziraphale snorted and waggled his eyebrows in agreement. The angel reached mutely for his tea and took a long draft, sighing deeply as he set it back down. He tapped the side of the cup restlessly as he moved to speak again.

“Crowley witnessed it all,” he said, the lines of anguish returning to his face. “He’s been so good to me. So patient.” He trailed off as a dreamy, loving look entered his eyes and the lines were replaced by the plumped cheeks and crow’s-foot creases of a real smile. Then the smile faded.

“But… well… it’s changed things,” he continued. “And I- I don’t know what to do. Neither does Crowley.” He looked over at her hopefully.

“What’s changed?” she asked delicately. “Maybe I can help.” That was doubtlessly why Crowley had asked her for this in the first place.

Aziraphale took a deep breath. “Um… I keep- I keep having these… ‘episodes’, I suppose, where, um, well, I feel… disconnected from everything. Sometimes for hours. Crowley tries to snap me out of it but it-it doesn’t always work.”

Madame Tracy said nothing, letting him continue.

“And it’s interfering with our, um…” - the angel coughed and his cheeks turned a deeper shade of pink - “…being intimate together.” He glanced at her hopefully again. “Y-You’re something of an expert in that area. What do you suggest?”

“So you’ve tried ‘being intimate’ since?” Madame Tracy responded with a question. She would normally be a lot more frank, but right now it was probably easiest to borrow the angel’s charmingly euphemistic turn of phrase.

Aziraphale nodded.

“And it didn’t go well?” she prompted.

The angel shook his head. “We got halfway,” he said, “and it was- it was ok, it was _nice_ , but then, well,” - he frowned - “something changed and I just, sort of… went numb.” His face creased with regret. “And that was the end of that.”

She smiled softly again and rubbed his arm.

“You’re going to need time, dear,” she said. “You have to be patient with yourself.” Aziraphale stared down into his tea, still forlorn.

It’s a good thing he came to me, she thought. At least she had some experience with this kind of thing; more than Crowley would, anyway. Content, well-adjusted individuals weren’t typically in the habit of visiting a sex worker when they could just as easily be getting ‘it’ in more typical places. Many of her clients had clearly been in it just as much for the company and emotional support as the sex, and over the years, she’d gotten pretty decent at assuaging the needs of the soul in addition to the body.

“If you want my advice for what to do-” she began, and he instantly looked back up at her, “I think you should try to focus on yourself. Rest, do things you enjoy, make sure you’re relaxing; really just take some time to nurture yourself.”

Aziraphale looked uncertain.

“As for the disconnecting-” she pressed on, taking charge of the conversation, “-well, we just need to find a way to reconnect you, that’s all.” A sudden memory flitted into her mind. “Come to think of it,” she continued, “I had a client once who I think suffered from a similar thing.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows rose inquisitively.

“He was rather odd with it - he would start listing things; objects that were in the room,” she said. “Said it helped to name all the blue things he could see or things he could smell. Quite bizarre.” She’d heard about Mindfulness and Similar Capitalised Concepts in magazines, although she wasn’t sure what blue objects had to do with it. “But it seemed to work for him,” she finished.

The angel looked rather sceptical. “So I should… count objects?” he asked.

Well, she hadn’t meant that quite so literally. “It’s all about grounding yourself in the present, I believe,” she said authoritatively. “Always returning to reality, and focusing on what’s around you.”

Aziraphale nodded slowly.

“For example, in the, ahem, _bedroom_ ” - Madame Tracey batted her eyelashes - “if you feel yourself drifting off, try to notice all of the touches and sensations and whatnot. Your Crowley seems very attentive,” she continued, causing Aziraphale to turn beetroot-red and grin sheepishly at the floor, “-so you just relax and think about what feels good to you, all the things that feel pleasurable in the moment.” She thought for a second.

“Do you have a bathtub?” she asked suddenly.

Aziraphale blinked in surprise, and then nodded. “Yes- well, Crowley has one, in his flat.”

Madame Tracey raised a finger to hush him and then quickly got up and left the angel sitting, confused, at the table, as she vanished into the bathroom at the back of the flat. With targeted precision, she collected together a number of parcels and baskets she’d had lying around, and brought an armful back out to the living room. They bumped and tumbled as she dumped them onto the table between them.

“So-” she pointed at each of the objects in turn, “-you’ve got bath bombs, and there’s some salts there too, and moisturiser and your essential oils and- oh, you like tea, don’t you, love?”

Ignoring Aziraphale’s bewildered face as he tried to process the question, she bustled over to the kitchenette and began pulling boxes from one of the cupboards. She reached to the very back and pulled down a bright gift box, containing a selection of exotic and colourful loose-leaf teas, which she’d at first mistaken for potpourri.

“One of my old clients gave me these, but Mr. S will never go for that sort of thing and after all, your need is greater,” she said, and added the box to the sprawling pile on the table.

“I-I couldn’t possibly accept all this!” the angel protested.

“Oh, nonsense, dear,” Madame Tracy replied, fussing a hand at him. “I’m always buying this stuff, or getting given it; I’ve plenty enough to last the rest of my life and beyond. It’s good to pay it forward.” Satisfied with the haul, she sat back down next to him.

Aziraphale looked sheepish again. “And… this will help, you think?” he asked quietly.

“Well, it’ll certainly relax you, and engage the senses,” she said. “And they say smell is a powerful thing, don’t they?” The smells that emanated from Shadwell’s flat certainly were, she thought to herself. “If you can practice focusing when you’re happy and relaxed, it’ll come easier when you really need to.”

Aziraphale sighed, and some of the tension finally melted away from his face as he smiled. Madame Tracey returned the expression.

“Oh, bother,” Aziraphale muttered, as he reached for his tea and noticed that both cups had gone rather lukewarm as they’d been talking.

“I’ll brew us another,” Madame Tracey said, beginning to get up.

“Oh, no need!” Aziraphale stopped her. He clicked his fingers sharply and suddenly both cups were once again as hot as newly poured, the smell of fresh tea thrown back into the air around them. Madame Tracey blinked in surprise. Sometimes she almost forgot that Aziraphale and Crowley weren’t human, and then they went and did - she’d heard them called miracles, and that seemed apt - just like it was nothing. Amazing.

She picked up the cup, somewhat cautiously, and took another sip. The angel smiled again, and joined her.

◥|⧗|◤

Crowley prodded the doorbell and then stepped back, squinting again at the needlessly complex display of his watch. He was a little bit earlier than he’d said. Hopefully that didn’t matter. He lounged against the edge of the wall as he waited for a response from inside the house, still feeling taut with nerves. This whole thing had been his idea, and while Aziraphale had assured him that he agreed, Crowley felt a little like he’d pressured the angel into it. He just hoped it would help.

He heard muffled footsteps, and stood up straight as the door clicked open and revealed Madame Tracey’s cheery face, greeting him. Aziraphale came up behind her, his arms full of… boxes? … and squeezed past until he was standing in front of Crowley.

“Hey angel,” Crowley said softly. “Ready to go?”

“One moment, dear,” Aziraphale replied. He turned back to Madame Tracey.

“I-I really can’t thank you enough, for all of this” - he gestured to the pile of boxes - “and all of the advice and just… for listening.” Crowley was glad to hear a note of calm and relief in the angel’s voice, which hadn’t been there when Crowley dropped him off.

“Any time, love,” Madame Tracey patted Aziraphale’s arm. “You take care of yourself now.”

She looked meaningfully at Crowley, and then added: “Both of you.”

Aziraphale beamed at them both, and then carefully picked his way over the doorstep and followed Crowley to the Bentley. Crowley opened and closed the door for him, gave a vague wave to Madame Tracey, and got into the driver’s side. As he did so, a cacophony of overlapping scents instantly hit him. It was just like he’d walked into one of those cosmetics shops - the sort that you could already get a whiff of from fifty metres away and whose products always looked tantalisingly edible.

“What’s all that about?” he nodded towards the source of the offending smell, the horde of parcels in Aziraphale’s arms.

Aziraphale laughed lightly. “I’m under strict instructions to relax,” he explained, his tone humorous.

Crowley smirked. “Well, I could have told you that.”

Aziraphale laughed again. Crowley’s heart squeezed in his chest at the sound of it. It was so good to hear him laugh again.

He leant close to the angel, his voice becoming earnest. “It helped, then?” he asked.

Aziraphale’s face softened and he gazed lovingly into Crowley’s eyes. “It did,” he replied sincerely. Crowley’s heart soared as the angel reached out to draw him close, and planted a firm kiss against the corner of his mouth. Then he settled back with a satisfied sigh. Crowley gazed at him fondly for a few seconds, then he put the Bentley into gear and they roared away.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a slow updater - expect a new chapter every 2-3 months. Thanks for reading!


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